Everything is Data
by One percent
Summary: The wrong set of decisions have brought humanity to the brink of extinction. In an attempt to survive, the remaining few set a plan to inhabit a new planet. Unfortunatly for them, nothing goes as planned. Another wrong choice would mean the end. Annihilation. And the one who has to make that choice is none other than Knives. (AU) KxM
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** A new story for the amazing Trigun fandom. This is an AU taking place in space. The main characters are Knives and Meryl. Many OCs will be introduced, but if you miss a character from Trigun; it is possible to make them make an appearance. I hope you will enjoy this tale.

**Disclaimer:** The Trigun characters belong to their rightful owners, we make no money out of this. The setting and all OCs belong to **TheHamsterofDeath**, whom I thank for accepting my request for writing this fic.

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><p>No matter what the final choice may be, these could be his final steps before it would all become irreversible. Unfortunately for him, he was unable to find a way that would allow him to make the choice and then simply go back. The thought process was still running, the simulations in his mind not yet completed. But it was already clear that neutrality was not an option. It would be worse than both extremes.<p>

In history, not many did get the chance to make a big change. And of those that did get one, all, without exception, could not foresee the whole spectrum of consequences. This case, however, was very much different. The ships' energy would run out in 47 minutes and 15 seconds. This was the time limit -even with all machinery except the most important ones shut down. Among the still operating machinery was a small computer, connected to some of the ships' systems, waiting for the decisive input. More than enough time to reach a clear conclusion, he assumed. His mind wandered back to historical events. A few hundred years ago, Earth's easy to use resources were depleted. All attempts to somehow use new energy sources, even the most promising ones, failed for various reasons.

It wasn't that everything was doomed from the start, far from it. But no matter what smart minds came up with, for political or financial reasons, or simply conflicts among nations, they never made the jump from the experimental state into a stable one. It wasn't until humanity saw its end right before its eyes that a big and powerful enough group formed that was able to isolate itself from the rest of the dying planet. Just before it was too late, scientists found, by accident, a way to rewrite the underlying structure of the universe itself.

Although they were just a team of 10 people led by someone considered crazy by the majority, they managed not only to prove a theory about the universe being holographic, but they also found a way to change its underlying structure, that is, information at its lowest level. This allowed them to pull huge amounts of energy out of seemingly nowhere.

They could take a part of empty space and rewrite it, so that it suddenly contained matter. They could take a part of space where matter was located and rewrite it, so that it was empty. Compared to this, every other discovery was insignificant, even if they had to rewrite space slowly unit by unit.

With the energy problem solved, a little nation-like-organization formed that was untouchable by all others. But the knowledge wasn't shared. It was decided that billions of humans were impossible to save, due to the lack of resources. The "holograph knowledge", as it was called, would have just been used as an offensive weapon. And if that happened, all would have been lost.

Instead, that nation referred to as 'Omega', started to invest all its resources, all it could gather, into building a single space station that could house about 10.000 humans.

In space, they gathered more and more materials from asteroids and used them to build more and bigger stations, until their entire population was no longer living on the surface. Their number reached 5 millions. This took 50 years.

By then, an Earth like planet had been found, and a plan was set in motion to reach it. Contrary to the hopes of many, no FTL drive was ever invented. Instead, people would be put into stasis, while an AI would take care of reaching the destination. In the unlikely event that something went wrong, the AI would cancel the stasis of a small emergency team, and they would take care of whatever problem came up. Or so was the plan…

When he opened his eyes 20 years ago, he knew all this already. Implanting knowledge into humans was common at that time. He knew he was on a ship, floating in space almost as fast as light.

That unexpected event...

That emergency nobody believed would happen, _happened._

The journey took millions of years in "outside of ship" time, but thousands of years before reaching the destination, the AI started to receive signals from its target planet.

It was already populated.

The AI, smart as it was, started to communicate and developed a language specifically for this. Sending a signal at the speed of light took about 5000 years to reach the planet, and 5000 years later, it would receive an answer. This happened exactly 1425 times, while everyone was still in stasis.

The last message of the alien species was _"Do not come to us."_

That was when the AI woke up the emergency team. Humanity was stuck on its space ships. The home planet was long dead, the new home already occupied.

It was decided to wake everyone up and live in the great void between stars, rather than letting everyone sleep forever.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** I hope you enjoy these installements. Meryl will appear starting chapter 05. Feedback and opinions are very appreciated (especially for a first story).

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><p>47 Minutes and 14 seconds left. Going through memories was an easy task for him. But the most complicated part was to build a reality from the many splattered data his memory summoned. For him, at that moment, there were multiple scenarios in which all of his memories made sense, and he had 47 Minutes and 14 seconds left to exclude all but one, or at least decide on the most likely one. He took the challenge.<p>

**Relevant memory 1**

He woke up lying on a bed in a warm room flooded by white, artificial sunlight, together with 6 other members of the emergency team. Every team was assigned to 3 roles, and there were two people assigned to fulfill each role. All were scientists and one fulfills the role of the missing ships' captain.

While in stasis, any kind of interaction with the body's mind is not possible. Usually, people are put from stasis into a deep sleep first; during which all relevant information is given to them in the form of dreams before they are woken up and instantly know what to do. This was different for the emergency team, since the decision to wake them up was taken just a few hours ago.

The AI's holographic representation, simply called "Ship" by the most, appeared in the middle of the room towards which all the beds were turned.

It gave them a summary: "The planet is already occupied. All information about the Alien species is available on your private terminals. They do not want us to come near. I woke you up because I was not given permission to change the goal of the mission."

"What about the alternative? Why did you not change course?" was the captain's first question.

"The communication took 14.250.000 years in total. The conditions under which the alternative plan was laid out no longer apply. Our potential second target collided with a large object, probably a stray moon or little planet that we were unable to detect. Its orbit changed, and it is no longer in the habitable zone."

"You...you must be kidding, right?" asked an engineer with a black beard. He was doubtful and his face did not fail to show it.

"No, this is not a joke," replied the AI.

"I see… Give me a summary about the Alien species," was the second question of the captain.

"I could not detect a change on the planet's surface since its very first discovery. Despite that, I received signals from the planet's orbit. My conclusion is that the species have been inhabiting the planet for at least a few million years without changing its atmosphere or giving off any kind of signals, except for direct transmissions, which is how we communicated."

"How do you know it is not just a single satellite, claiming that the planet is inhabited?"

"I do not know with absolute certainty. However, every piece of information that I was given could be confirmed or at least, does not contradict anything I could confirm."

"Ok, what should we know?"

"There is indeed nothing on the surface. According to the communication satellite, about 350 million years ago, two species were fighting for dominance over a solar system. One was forced to flee. They found this planet and are now hiding below the surface."

The AI continued, "Compared to us, they are more plant like. Everything they do is, for us, very slow. Their fight over their solar system, for example, took about 100.000 years and consisted of only a dozen events that we would call battles."

"So, we could just fly to the planet and colonize it, and they wouldn't be able to do anything about it, correct?"

"No, that is not true. Instead of engaging in war like activities themselves, in which we would have an overwhelming advantage, they started to use artificial organic life forms, more similar to us. If we were to come any closer, they would attempt to destroy our ships."

"Why? They only live underground; we could live on the surface."

"No, I already did a lot of negotiations. They are hiding. They said that they cannot risk being found by their former enemies. Their highest priority is to stay undetected. Also, I can neither estimate their military strength, nor am I allowed to take such a decision."

"So you wake us up to tell us that we might or might not have to fight one or two unknown alien species, or stay in space forever?"

"Yes. This is an emergency case according to the definition given to me."

Everybody else was just listening. This was completely unexpected.

A member of the medical team took over the questioning part. "The stasis pods are all ok, even after such a long time?"

"Yes. There were minor malfunctions, but nothing I wasn't able to take care of. All passengers are still in stasis, there were no interruptions."

The next question came from an engineer. "What about damage to the ship? Radiation, small meteorites…? Is the hull ok?"

"The outer hull layers have taken some damage due to a large amount of small high speed particles over time, but repairs could always be done quickly enough. We never went above 15% damage. Therefore, the inner layers were always protecting us from radiation."

The captain took over again. "Ship, could we wake up everyone and live on the ships, in theory? Would that be an option?"

"No, it is not an option. Despite our ability to grow our food, we do not have enough space to produce enough for everyone. If we wake everyone up, 50% are sure to not get the necessary amount of water or food."

The captain remembered that back in Earth's orbit, a large portion of food still came from the surface.

"Would a stasis cycle be an option? If only a small portion of us is awake at a time, and we take turns?"

"As a short term solution, yes. Each time a stasis pod is used, there is a 0.0017% chance of it failing and needing repairs. We would eventually run out of materials to repair them."

The engineer raised his voice again. "We do have the required machinery on board, but it was never intended for use in space. We could set up some of it inside the ship, but it would consume way too much space."

"Exactly", added the AI, "I already considered this as a possibility. For a permanent solution, we either need to colonize a planet, or let 93% of the stasis pods active forever. We can only supply 7% of the total crew."

"So, we might as well vent them all into space and use the freed room for the remaining 7%?"

That was his voice. He remembered everyone, even the AI's hologram, turning suddenly to look at him for posing this question. _That is as much logic as these beings can take_, he remembered thinking.

He let his icy blue eyes roam the room. This was the first time he actively looked at the others. They were all wearing the same type of suit, a white and somewhat tight soft tissue with a sign on them, giving away both their names and assignments.

"Did the stasis affect your brain, Knives? We can't do that. Not only would it be a crime, but..."

"Relax, Dallas. I am not serious." He smiled.

Dallas shook his head and sighed, "Of course not." After a deep breath, he continued, "Ok, suggestions?"

Knives stood up. "Isn't it obvious? We conquer the planet. What other choice do we have?"

He tried not to mess up his memories. Who was in which position, who said what, the color of every person's skin, hair, their voices. He was sure to have gotten the captain perfectly right. A star on his shoulder as a sign of rank, short black hair, dark skin. _And foolish_, he mentally added.

"It is either fight an unknown alien force, or keep most of us in stasis forever. Unless someone has a third option."

The other engineer who was in Knives team raised a question, "Ship, isn't it an option to go to another planet? You must have found some, given the time you had."

The holograph turned to Engineer Brett. "I have been scanning all planets in range of my sensors, but no planets not requiring terraforming have been detected."

Knives remembered a scientific paper about how terraforming failed on Mars. Contrary to the Earth, Mars does not have a magnetic field, shielding it from solar winds. This was caused by Mars having a solid, non moving core. Since the core of the Earth is fluid, it can move, and this exact movement is what creates its magnetic field. So, the first step was to melt its core. A slight miscalculation was made, its core expanded a bit too much, and the crust broke open at many points, turning Mars into a planet covered by highly active volcanoes. Humanity did not possess the knowledge necessary, and Mars was its only guinea pig.

"But there are so many planets, some must be valid targets for colonization!" Brett seemed desperate. Given the high number of planets and the long time to find one, the chance of finding a planet was actually high. Or it should have been, according to estimations, around 70%. But there was none found, well within everyone's expectations.

The sign for the members of the engineer team was a screw and a hammer. _A good old screw_, Knives thought, _even if screws had become obsolete over time_. _The good old screw symbol survived despite all odds, not even being the correct counterpart of the hammer. Must have been some engineer's joke._ _Do not get sidetracked_, he chided himself.

"Ship, give me estimations. Assume we woke everyone up and colonized the planet, what is the most likely outcome?" was the captain's next question.

"I am sorry, captain. I do not have enough data to make such a prediction."

A woman from the medical team with very long brown hair and bright skin, her name was Chambers, was watching until now. "Maybe we should vote? Since we are seven, there can't be a tie, and our captain has as much of an idea what to do as we have."

"Wait a moment," Knives interrupted her. "Ship, you must have tried to ask for permission to send a drone to the planet, or a small team, something that does not pose a threat of luring that evil alien army in?" In his mind, he already planned out several attack scenarios.

"Yes. While in principle they would agree to that, they do not trust us. To send a shuttle, we would have to move our whole ship next to the planet, since shuttles do not have stasis pods. If we move a ship, they will attack us, assuming we might plan on attacking them. We have no way of improving our intentions."

"They cannot send an observer to us that would warn them in case we tried something fishy?"

"They assume we might be able to reverse engineer the observer and send false messages to them."

"So, they are completely paranoid and logical?"

"Precisely."

_It made sense, _he thought_, since their planet was found, they contacted the ship. Had it been the enemy, they would have lost nothing by doing so. Had it been anyone else, they might avoid a problem._

"Hm," concluded Knives, "so it is stay in stasis or risk a war with an unknown force."

The second medical team member, an overweight man named Sharma, raised his hand to get the attention of everyone. "Maybe we should go back into stasis and let the ship fly around until it finds a suitable planet? Even if it takes a few more millions of years, isn't it almost guaranteed that we would find one?"

Knives turned to him. "Impossible. Stasis pods need maintenance while running. It is minimal, but I am surprised they all lasted that long. We need materials, process them, we need engineers to keep them intact. For all this to work, especially getting enough materials from asteroids, a large part of the crew has to be active. We never planned for something like this. The risk of failure would be very high. We would probably end up dying one after another, floating in empty space."

"Can't we materialize it?" asked the Captain.

"Pff. You really have no idea, have you? We can use a materializer to create particles which we then use for fusion as an energy source, but that's it. Back on Earth, we had huge generators, and even then it took hours to generate a gram of material. And even if we had one of those, we would still require nanobots that organize that matter, program them and all this engineer stuff that you do not understand. To set this all up was planned to be done after we settled down on a planet."

The captain was openly annoyed by now. "Let us vote. This is leading nowhere." _Leading nowhere indeed_, thought Knives, _what with your lack of brains_.

The options were simple: attack or float in space in hopes of finding another planet.

Knives went through his memory again and again, until he found the clue he was looking for. Then, he moved on to the next relevant fragment. This was going to soon give him a headache.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N:** I hope that the complexity of the story does not bother the readers, as I know that it can get quite technical on some parts. However, if you are patient with the story, your efforts will be rewarded.

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><p>47 Minutes and 7 seconds left. Knives was done analyzing a memory fragment in his mind.<p>

"I wonder how it must feel for a non enhanced human".

A few generations ago, humans began to optimize their own D.N.A. to improve themselves. Better eyes, smarter brains and the like. This didn't apply to everyone, since meddling with D.N.A. was highly likely to go wrong, and for every success that was achieved, there were many "failures" created on the way.

Some people said that sacrifices can be made for the greater good, some said nobody had the right to experiment on humans and create countless abominations to take evolution into their own hands. Both factions never came to an agreement, and there were many shades of grey between the extremes.

Some things were simple, like making someone resistant against radiation by having his cells keep an extra copy of its D.N.A. Some things were incredibly difficult, like making someone smarter.

How to even achieve this? One way was to improve the raw processing speed of a brain. If you want to make nerve cells communicate faster, you need to add connections between them or give existing connections a higher bandwidth. In the first case, more connections don't necessarily make you smarter. There is a physical limit to the number of connections of a cell – it cannot reach very far, or else the signals will take too much time to reach their destination. Connections might break off, simply because it becomes physically fragile. And even if a cell grows more dendrites, it doesn't necessarily improve anything. Add a second cook, the potato won't be done faster. Many connections are useless. This is why the brains of young children usually have a very high number of connections, and the brains of adults have less. They got rid of useless ones.

Improving the speed of signals was a better way. Whatever you do, if you do it faster, the world seems to move in slow motion for you. However, this might require a completely different brain chemistry and can become insanely complicated.

A photographic memory was among the things that became achievable. All you needed to do was to look into the brains of people who could do it by themselves and then replicate it in brains that could not do it. Knives was benefitting from that. He couldn't compete against the ships' computer, but he was far above what a non enhanced human could achieve. It did not hurt that his I.Q. score was originally of the highest percentiles.

Size was another limit. The brain cannot be expanded infinitely since it is in a skull. And then, there was the information delay problem. If you took the cells of several brains and just constructed a huge super-brain out of them, you would increase the raw processing power, but also the organization required to get them all to do useful work. Such a brain might be smarter than a small one, but would take very long to process simple things. Cockroaches have a reaction time of 8.2 milliseconds. The average reaction time of humans' brains is between 200 and 300 milliseconds.

This is exponential or linear, or anything in between, depending on the process that is running. A super intelligent being might be capable of things we could not dream of, but it might take hours to imagine it while for us, visualizing something is almost instantaneous.

Thanks to the clue Knives found so early and easily, he picked the next relevant memory Fragment.

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><p>The vote failed. Well, sort of. In the end, 6 people were in favor of relieving the captain from his duty and put him back into stasis because he was incapable of taking decisions. He smirked at the thought. He vaguely wondered if the guy would hold a grudge against him for planting the idea in the first place. "Maybe we should just get a real captain?" he had said. Everybody agreed to a certain degree, and then it snowballed. Dallas felt humiliated by that, but Knives did not care. What could idiots like Dallas do against him anyway? And in any case, he should be grateful not to be forced to take decisions anymore. He did him a favor.<p>

After that, it was decided to check the ships' data on the aliens and split into two teams. One was trying to create an all-or-nothing attack plan, just to see what the options were, the other one tried to find a way to get more information. A replacement captain was woken up.

"Fascinating," was his comment on the whole situation. He instantly started to interrogate the ships AI, while in parallel, reading the summary the crew prepared for him.

On his second day, he sat in his small office, looking outside. The outside was recorded by cameras and then transferred to the inside to big screens – windows were a structural weakness and made building a ship more complicated, considering the necessary shielding.

He let his personal robot prepare a cup of tea and called everyone in.

"This is my idea," he began, "We know for certain that the satellite has to communicate in a direct line of sight with the 'planties'." He called the aliens 'planties'. "This is the only way to prevent stray signals from leaking outside. The planet spins, so the receiver could be anywhere on the surface. The scans, however, did not show anything. So it has to be a small receiver. It could be as small as my cup here," he patted said cup lovingly, and then resumed. "If we assume that the satellite can shoot high precision signals -and given that it was able to send messages to us, 5000 light-years away, my assumption would be highly likely."

He drank some of his tea, looking outside his fake window.

"Now, what if we were able to just take a small stone, throw it at the speed of light, hit the satellite, take its place, and keep sending an "it's all cool up here" signal to the 'planties' cup, they would not come out of their cave."

He looked at the crew. "Opinions?"

The crew was composed out of a campaign and three teams. One of the teams was irrelevant so far, but that changed at this exact moment. Knives recalled two new faces that looked alike. Two women, twins, their assignment being "tactical officer". A 'tinker-less' engineer, if you will. The captain gave the goal, tacticians were supposed to find a feasible way to put it into action, and the engineers were supposed to actually do it.

Since the tacticians' family names were the same, they were called by their first names instead.

One of the two, Amita, immediately began to make plans. "That stone being a laser, fired by us. It just needs to be strong enough to destroy the satellite before it can react. To be sure, it needs to be as powerful as possible."

"But," continued the other twin, Meryl, "what if it constantly sends a keep-alive-signal? We would interrupt it!"

"True," answered Amita without missing a beat, "we need to know if it does, and if it does, we need to send it ourselves the moment the satellite stops. But how do we even learn what the signal should be like? Can we even reproduce it?"

"We know what kind of laser was used to transmit information to us. It is probably the same," replied Meryl.

"Maybe, maybe not. Wait. There is no way a short interruption would arouse suspicion. What about clouds, or tiny asteroids blocking the direct line of sight?"

"You are so smart!" exclaimed Meryl.

"I know, right?" replied the twin. "Do we know it is the only satellite? Ship?"

The ship confirmed that there was only one, and the sisters voiced their satisfaction while resuming their exchange.

Knives could appreciate good ideas, but felt that hearing a bit more of the undeserved self boasting would make his poor ears bleed.

"Knives!" The captain interrupted the twins exchange, much to Knives relief. "I want you and your genius companion here to build us a smart stone that we can throw below the satellite. I want it to record whatever is sent down to the surface. We'll record it and replicate it. Oh, and I need it to be invisible. It has to sit in orbit for a while, letting all light pass through it. And it has to relay everything to us."

Knives and Brett spent the next 3 months on constructing a sphere that would bend all light around it, keeping a tiny bit of it and recording it. It would have an internal energy source that it would use to send back a high precision ray of light, giving the crew all the information necessary to pretend to be the current satellite.

It was shot at the planet at almost the speed of light and travelled for 5000 years. It was extremely unlikely to hit anything on its path, and indeed, it didn't. Due to its light bending properties and small size, it wasn't detected. 10.000 years after the plan was put into action, the emergency crew was woken up again by the ships' A.I.

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><p><strong>AN**: I would like to thank **TheLibraryWitch** for being the first reviewer of my very first story. ;)


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer:** Knives and Meryl are not mine.

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><p>Petkus insisted on being put into stasis with his tea cup. The ship wanted to refuse, but was convinced that it should not be dangerous once Petkus asked for an exact replica made out of non problematic materials. Whatever these were, they felt and looked identical to whatever the old cup was made out of, so everything was ok.<p>

While Knives made the finishing touches on the drone, Brett was ordered to prepare the stasis safe cup.

He recalled remembering these thing as he woke up, before his mind became clear again.

10.000 years had passed, but it felt like a short nap. None of all the other crewmembers except the emergency team had any idea about the important decisions that have been taken.

The drone launch was a success; it used a directed gravity wave to slow down in front of the satellite. A moment after that, it unfolded itself to an area of about a square kilometer. Knives refused to use the measurement unit "mile".

The drone successfully caught all transmissions from the satellite to the planet, and also all transmissions back. Equipped with a copy of the ships' AI, just with less processing power, it began to decode the signals. It turned out to be impossible because of an encryption the aliens used.

But Knives wasn't made an engineer because he knew politicians. He made it there using his brain.

"And if we made ourselves invisible instead?" was the idea. "We cover the layer in nano-cameras on both sides, they record everything, and on the other, we emit the image from the other side – then we wrap it around the satellite. Our ship arrives, isn't seen, we use the same technique to land on the planet. The satellite would be blind, except for what we let it see."

"But we have to cover all possible frequencies, since we don't know what the satellite is scanning for." Brett and Knives were an efficient Team. Covering all frequencies was impossible, they both knew that. Much too complicated to get all the devices into the sphere.

"Then how about we leave holes? We use a transparent material that lets everything through; we make it extremely thin, except for one little area that blocks a part of its view, which will be where we hide. Must be an area without stars or anything, ideally also weak background radiation."

"Making it too thin will cause it to break easily because of background radiation, Knives."

"Then how about we just shoot it down and be done with it? This is way too complicated; we know almost nothing about the satellite."

It went on for a while like that. In the end, they decided on something else entirely.

They shot both the sphere that unwrapped to a round plane, intercepting signals, below the satellite, and also created a tiny singularity. By the time the sphere's signal caused the crew to wake up, the singularity had also reached the solar system of the aliens. Another singularity was created, using up most of the complete fleets stored energy and left a few light-minutes away from the fleet.

The purpose of the sphere was to intercept the signals. It turned out to be a short signal that went in both directions, but at every transmission, it changed a bit, and the AI couldn't decipher the pattern, so replacing the signal was impossible. Of course the aliens might detect the tiny black hole that has been sent if they were looking at, let's say, their sun, closely enough. It would slightly change its shape and center of gravity. Or humanity might get lucky. They wouldn't know until they tried, but black holes were, if not placed in front of another shiny object, extremely hard to detect directly, since they don't exactly emit a lot of things.

After unfolding and confirming that the paranoid aliens used some kind of encryption, a few hundred microscopic little robots slowly drifted towards the satellite. They reached its surface, assembled themselves to a few dozen, still tiny bug like robots and started to wander around on the satellite, trying to find a hole, a scratch big enough to slip in. Over time, some tiny particles did hit the satellite, and indeed, after days of scanning its surface, they found a suitable crack and got in one by one in their initial form, not bigger than a human cell.

It took hours to get inside the satellite. Then, the robot assembled itself to its final form and began analyzing the satellite from the inside. Thanks to another copy of the Ship's AI, the robot was able to seize control. Once that was done, a success signal was sent through the singularity, saving roughly 5000 years. The fleet was set into motion by the AI, and after 10.000 years in total, the complete fleet was in orbit around the planet's sun, on the other side.

"Can't be too paranoid," agreed Petkus once he learned about the plan, and gave his ok.

Knives took a shower, got into his 14 million years old uniform and met with the others in the captain's office, where they could see the solar system's sun. It looked almost liked the sun of Earth, just a bit bigger.

"Our new home, ladies and gentlemen", Petkus said. He finished his cup of tea.

"Let's go and get it."

He looked at his window which highlighted a small planet that was on the other side of the sun.

Knives found nothing of interest in this memory fragment and moved on to the next.

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><p>It was a risk, but the captain decided to wake up the complete crew on all ships. The supplies would last up to a year at most, during which time the colonization would have to take place. Otherwise, it would be game over. Energy wasn't a problem, it would slowly recharge. They had an advantage right now, the enemies missing knowledge, and the enemies' reaction time.<p>

Well, they were not yet enemies at that point, but they would soon be. Except if the aliens decided to let them be; which was a possibility everyone was hoping for. As perfectly logical beings, they might decide that a war might cause them to be found by their enemies, while letting humans live still offered the chance of not being detected, maybe even getting humans as allies. Humanity should have to break through their paranoia reasoning.

Knives found nothing of interest in this memory fragment either and moved on to the next.

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><p>42 Minutes left. How did the fleet end up without energy? His calculations have been cross checked by the AI, and the AI does not make mistakes like that. That left only sabotage. An integrity check revealed that the AI itself had not been tampered with, that excluded any kind of virus. The AI was fully operational, and has been all the time. Knives was sure about that.<p>

Of the originally planned year the operation could have taken, only 2 months had passed.

The colonization was not even nearly in a state where it could have been put into action without leaving 90% of humanity behind in space on dead ships, but there was a ... serious problem that absolutely had to be taken care of. Knives was the one taking an extremely important and risky decision.

First option: Initiate a collision course to the planet and hope that as many people as possible survived and conquer it. On the way, all ships would probably run out of energy, making a survival unlikely, but possible. Instead of 90%, only 70% would die.

Second option: Set a course and let all the ships fly directly into the sun. This would of course result in a 100% loss of the fleet if it were to be done.

His choice was quick. The AI confirmed the deadly destination after Knives switched the safety regulations off.

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><p><strong>AN:** Who can guess which destination?


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N:** Let's see who can figure out what is happening. Also thanks to **cmr2014** for reviewing. Longer chapter as a thank you for my two reviewers. -**HoD**

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><p>The problem with an artificially improved memory was that no one found a way to prevent it from generating noise from time to time. Knives was about to recall another memory, but his mind got flooded by images, sounds, smells.<p>

Brett had a short beard. His hairs were thick, black, and well taken care of. There were 7 hairs bothering him, and he regularly pulled them out. His skin reacted to that, the result were tiny, barely visible red spots. Knives remembered the past 12 conversations during which he noticed this, without asking for it. His head began to hurt. "Damn you, brain." He had to sit down. "Don't backfire now."

Every brain has the capability to record events in great detail. The reason most brains don't is that they have filters that remove what is irrelevant. This filter has been modified for Knives, but so far, no one ever found a way to prevent a lot of garbage from being recorded along the interesting things. And sometimes, his brain could switch into a temporary associative search mode, collecting and recalling an insane amount of data, based on what Knives was thinking about. It was his equivalent of an epileptic seizure.

Next, he saw the structure of the white suit of his current captain, Petkus. The uniform was mostly white, with some black parts covering the shoulders and legs. It had two layers, one that could wrap itself tightly around the body in stasis or whenever the intelligent suit decided that it would make sense, another one – the outer one - that would always stay the same.

When the suits were introduced, the instructor explained all its functions. It could keep its user isolated from heat and cold air, prevent humidity loss, act as a bulletproof vest and, since engineers like to add some useless features as well just for the fun of it, was edible and came in two flavours. Cookies and chicken.

In the complete history of humanity, 2 suits have been completely eaten, and 184 people tried them. To their surprise, the missing parts grew back. Knives remembered all their names and birth dates.

"Come on...focus..."

He needed to get his brain back on the right track. "Think about the crew." It flashed in his head.

"Hey Knives, are you ok?"

Brett put his hand on Knives shoulder, looking worried. "Is it happening again?" he asked, already knowing the answer. Knives was staring into the air for a few more seconds, then his mind was back in his place. "Yes, sorry, I spaced out a bit."

Brett was relieved. "Ok then, press the button." Despite being co-engineers for over a year in total, Knives couldn't decide if he should like or dislike Brett. They were a good team, understood each other when it came to assembling machines, but Knives considered him boring in any other category. He was so... almost replaceable by a robot, and no one would notice the difference.

Knives quickly gathered his most recent memories and became aware of where he was and what he was doing. In front of him was a holographic screen, projected into his eyes. This was the way of augmenting reality since ... well, one and a half million years now.

"Are you sure?" was the computer's question. "Yes" and "No" were two buttons, and Knives quickly pushed into the air, at the position where both he and Brett saw the "Yes".

"Starting wakeup sequence," responded the ship.

Around the two engineers, one after another, in groups of 20, stasis pods were transported in, popped open, and people stepped out. Since they all went through the standard procedure, meaning being informed via dreams, they woke up without mental confusion, just as if they slept normally for about 8 hours.

Knives was a bit annoyed by the fact that for him, it felt like waking up in the middle of a surgery, half his body numb, his mind confused, unable to tell how much time passed between the end of the stasis and him opening his eyes or even standing up.

The first people that were woken up belonged to the medical staff. Meryl and her sister Amita were making sure they were fine – which wasn't really necessary, since the ship's AI was monitoring everyone all the time, and they all took over the task of waking up the remaining crew members.

For the average observer, the two women might look similar, but Knives remembered all their tiny little differences. The hair of Meryl was a tiny bit shorter.

"Meryl," began Knives to ask, "Why do you stay here? You already spent the last 30 hours on planning the wake up order, making rough plans for the next weeks. You should rest now."

This was a major difference between the two sisters.

"If you want it to be done properly, you have to do it yourself. I can sleep in a few hours. If you don't distract me from my duties."

"Your efficiency will suffer. And you know it."

"Knives, we are about to invade a planet occupied by an alien species. We have exactly one chance at this, and we absolutely cannot afford to waste any time here. Now let me work."

She was unusually harsh. But it was understandable. There was only one person under more pressure than her, and that was Petkus, a tea loving russian old man who for some reason, didn't seem to have a problem reading an old fashioned book at this exact time in his office that he locked from the inside.

"Also, I already consulted Chambers. She said I should be fine with the amount of attention enhancers I currently use for at least 8 more hours, and a week if I sleep at least 6 hours per day. But thank you for caring."

Knives almost sighed, but then he decided not to. Meryl saw herself and everyone else as tools, always trying to get the most out of every asset at her disposal. If she could, she would take over everyone's job.

The "wakeup room", as it was called, was the busiest place in the next days. A constant stream of nervous and/or traumatized people came out. Many of them looked like they woke up from a terrible nightmare and were given a mix of drugs to quickly calm them down. There was no time to lose.

Knives was surprised at the sight of the first one, but he quickly realized that nobody really expected a problem, and contrary to him, who had time to digest it, everybody was basically told that the mission was a failure and that they had to prepare for a war, even though only a few of them had ever even received combat training. But still, couldn't that AI have delivered the news in a less shocking way?

Still, in less than a week, the complete crew was awake and somewhat functioning.

* * *

><p>The leading officers and the working majority took turns. Every day began by reading reports. Knives read what he was supposed to work on, did his job, gave a summary. This summary would be read by his superior, who would discuss the next steps with some other higher-ups while Knives slept in his small room.<p>

"So, that is your plan, Meryl?"

A week and a day after the wakeup process started, a clear plan was formulated by the tactical officer Meryl. He hoped that it was her definition of a joke. He had to admit that he would almost find it funny -on a sadistic level- if it were. But then again, he reminded himself that the fate of mankind actually depended on said plan. And he knew better than to assume that Meryl was anything but serious.

"Sorry, but this is not possible. Who came up with this nonsense? Couldn't be you, could it? Or did the medication finally fry your brain?"

Knives opened a direct communication channel. There was an overlap window, in case there would be a need to discuss things. Meryl didn't answer. "Come on, what are you doing? Don't tell me you are actually sleeping like you should." He called again, no answer. "Guess I'll have to go there..."

He slipped into his self cleaning uniform, brushed quickly over his short blonde hair and stepped out of his room. He ended up in a long hall that had an elevator at one end, and a big conference room at the other. There were 99 other rooms exactly like his, and 10 levels exactly like this one on the ship.

Meryl worked, or slept, or did whatever she did, on the lowest.

"To Meryl, I suppose?" asked the ship when Knives entered the elevator. It was a very smart AI. It correctly interpreted Knives silence as a 'yes' and started the elevator.

* * *

><p>"Room 18..." he mumbled, while looking for Meryl's door. It didn't open.<p>

"Ship, what's happening in there?"

"Sorry Knives, she activated the privacy mode. I cannot tell you what she is doing."

"Meryl!" he kicked against the thin and yet extremely stable door. It almost made no sound.

No answer. "Ok, then I will have to bend the rules a bit." He took out a small device, attached it to the door and activated it. "Meryl, open the door. We need to discuss the nonsense you want me to do".

"I know you can hear me." The device was using the resonance frequency of the doors material to transmit Knives voice to the inside. The engineers came up with this useless tool in their free time, before the whole mission started.

Finally, the door opened. A gun appeared. Knives' quick reflexes kicked in and he took a step to the right. Then he noticed that it was a stun gun. At least not deadly. "How dare you disturb me?"

Meryl's face looked extremely pale, her eyes were red. "Let me guess," he said, "You could stop if you wanted to, right?"

That question was enough to let Meryl collapse. "I don't have time to discuss. I know you don't see why, but you need to do it exactly as I said. Trust me."

"Look at yourself. You don't know what you're saying. Using stasis pods to get the crew to the planet is insane. There is no way we could turn them into shuttles given the time we have. Putting several people into a single pod for the time of the travel will make the stasis procedure extremely risky, and even in the best of all cases, those that arrive will suffer from cosmic radiation. Stasis pods are simply the worst shuttles."

Meryl was sitting on the ground, her face behind her hands. "We have to leave the ship," she said. "We have to leave it as soon as we can."

Knives called for Chambers. She arrived within 2 minutes. Knives observed her reaction as closely as he could. The moment she saw Meryl, she seemed to be shocked. "What did you do?" she asked.

No response.

"How did this happen? Let me take a look at your eyes." Meryl still didn't respond, but didn't resist either as Chambers removed her hands.

"I don't understand." She turned her head, as if Knives would know the answer. "I didn't give her a dose high enough to cause this. Even if she took everything at once, it's not enough. She overdosed it completely. Ship, did anyone aside from me give Meryl access to the attention enhancers?"

The ship responded: "No."

"How many doses did she get?"

"I delivered 10mg per day."

"This is even below the allowance I gave her. Knives, help me carry her into the medbay."

He helped. Meryl's body felt light in his arms, very light. _Of course_, he thought, _we slowed down the ship's rotation to reduce the artificial gravity to make working with heavy parts easier._ Meryl currently had only 70% of her actual weight.

Inside the medbay, automatic scanners instantly began to investigate. Samples were taken, analyzed, and the results came up immediately. Meryl had obviously taken 10 times more attention enhancers and even some extra drugs.

"I have no explanation for this." Chambers looked at two screens displaying contradictory information. "I guess I will have to see for myself how much we have left to be certain. But really, I didn't think she would go so far as to change the ships' logs to cover up something like this. It was doomed to fail."

Chambers stayed silent for a moment, then she said,"I will keep her here until she has fully recovered. Luckily, the damage is only temporary. She is relieved from her duties for at least a few days. Ship, please confirm."

The ship's hologram appeared. "Confirmed. Meryl's rank has been changed from tactical officer to civilian; I temporarily removed all her privileges for the time being."

* * *

><p><strong>AN:** Reviews are very appreciated, and motivating! And of course, I am curious to know what your assumptions are!


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N: Have fun with the story. I had fun making the plot.**

* * *

><p>Meryl slowly opened her bloodshot eyes and painfully raised her head.<p>

"H-how long?" came out of her mouth.

Chambers, who just injected something into her arm, told her to stay calm.

"Listen, commander," it was unusual for her to address Meryl that way, "I checked the remaining doses of attention enhancers. I even went so far as to have my lab robot check the content of every single vial. It took 2 days during which I had to do all the lowly work myself. It slowed me down a lot, and people had to wait, which didn't happen for decades." Her tone was somewhere between threatening and annoyed.

"So, I would very much like to know how you managed to get drugs out of nowhere. I checked your complete medical history. You like to use them, but even if you kept some old ones instead of using them, it didn't add up. No one else got attention enhancers so far, so you couldn't have used someone else's. How did you do it? And don't try to deny it, the results are absolutely clear."

Meryl looked like she was extremely tired.

"Tired? Understandable. I forced your body to wake up a bit sooner, Captain's orders."

Meryl mumbled something that Chambers couldn't understand. She didn't ask. "Try again in a few minutes." She opened a communication channel. "You can come; she will be ready for questioning."

A few minutes later, both Petkus and Knives entered the medbay. They both had been watching what was happening so far on screens floating in front of their eyes. Petkus was in what seemed to be a good mood, as always. Knives however, badly wanted some answers. The captain gave him a special assignment related to what he referred to as the "Meryl Miracle".

"Ok," Petkus began, "Chambers said you are mentally clear now?"

"Yes," responded Meryl, now clearly less confused.

"So, first, what happened?"

"I do not remember what happened. I woke up here. The last thing I remember is being tired. I was about to go to bed, Knives called. After this, I remember nothing."

"Chambers, is memory loss among the rare symptoms? I don't remember hearing about such a side effect."

The captain brought his tea cup with him. He let the steam envelop his face.

"No. There is a point where organs and blood vessels start to take damage; in extreme cases, even the brain. But none of the scans indicated brain damage. And if that damage occurs, everything suffers from it, not just the memory."

"So you are still insisting on the event being practically impossible, right?" Petkus smiled in a strange way, as if he knew what was going on and just toying with everyone. But he clearly didn't know.

Knives waited for a question to be directed at him. While waiting, he turned left. There was a mirror. Until now, he never remembered actively how he looked like: bright blonde hair -almost colorless, thinner than the average crew member, bigger than Meryl and Chambers. His hair was cut short back in this memory fragment, unlike now. His face looked a bit younger, too.

"Knives, it seems that Meryl has no idea what happened. Would you explain to her why you are very interested in finding the truth?"

Why was Petkus here? Knives dug a bit and found the information. After learning about all the events so far, the actual captain decided to keep Petkus as his second executive officer.

"Meryl, do you remember that you pointed a gun at me?"

Meryl seemed genuinely surprised. "No! I don't! Tell me already what is going on here!" Meryl also seemed genuinely angry.

"Benefit of the doubt," said Knives to himself, taking a step back. "Here is a holographic record of what happened, as seen from my viewpoint." He showed it to her.

"We do not know what happened before that in your room, since you switched to privacy mode."

Meryl calmed down, recalled what she did. "Yes, that's right. I was about to sleep and I don't want to be recorded by the AI. But I do not remember anything of what you showed me."

Knives decided it was time to explain why the case was labeled a miracle.

"I checked the AI logs. As a non engineer, you probably don't know about the details, so let me sum up the relevant facts. The AI cannot act outside of its programming. It is not self aware, so it doesn't have a free will. Nobody ever figured out what exactly that is, so we couldn't reproduce it."

Meryl was listening. After cooling down a bit, she understood that whatever happened, it was important and mysterious enough to cause the XO to investigate. So, the best course of action was to cooperate.

"That means, the AI can never go rogue except if someone programmed it to do so. Chambers couldn't explain where you got your drugs from."

"I didn't!" interrupted him Meryl, followed by "sorry, continue".

"Chambers assumed you might have hacked it, so I checked for modifications. As an engineer, you'd know it is futile. We keep logs, and independent copies of logs. Every change that is done to the AI is recorded. Even to me, it would be impossible to hack the AI without spending weeks, if not months, erasing my traces."

The AI was in control over the ship and could basically kill everyone in less than a minute by venting all air into space. To prevent things like these, a lot of security mechanisms were in place, one of them being overly paranoid logging, constant self checks and so on.

If only Knives had checked for the right thing back then, the catastrophe could have been avoided. But what happened, happened.

"To you, it simply is impossible. We checked every possibility we could think of. You have no way of messing with the AI. And it would be out of character. You would have lost more time erasing your traces than you would have won by using the drugs. On top of that, you had no reason to overdose. You would have used a dosage close to the border of being dangerous, not cross it. In other words..."

Meryl was very curious now, hoping for an explanation that would make her feel at ease.

"You have been poisoned by someone who can create attention enhancers."

Chambers looked directly into Knives face, changing her expression as if to say "Oh come on. Really? Me?"

Knives didn't understand what she seemed to want to complain about. Mentally, he couldn't be further away from accusing her, so it took a moment for him to follow the logic of Chambers.

"Oh!" he responded, "No, I didn't consider you as a culprit. We are completely missing a motive here. Aside from that, you are not the only physician here that is capable of producing drugs."

The crime rate of the part of humanity that left Earth dropped to zero. Every ship had an AI, and whatever crime someone might attempt, the AI would have instantly caught it. The privacy mode could delay the detection for some time, but it getting caught was inevitable. As a result, no more crimes happened. Of course, some people would commit them, given the chance, but they didn't get the chance. Not anymore. As a result of this, there was no police, no detectives, nothing of the sort. The AI took care of it all.

"But let's talk about the nonsense you wanted me to do."

"Nonsense?" Meryl, despite half lying, wanted to jump at Knives, even before she realized that she didn't know what he was referring to.

"You wanted to use stasis pods and shuttles to reach the planet. You do remember that, since you made the plan before you blacked out. Correct?"

He showed Meryl the content of the message.

She shook her head. "That is not what I wrote. I send you a message asking _if_ it was possible, I didn't order you to do it. The basic idea was to minimize the risk of us being detected by using shuttles that were as small as possible, using some cloaking additions."

"Are you sure her head is ok, Chambers?" Petkus was finished emptying his teacup.

"Absolutely! I checked it multiple times." She was clearly offended at being accused of poisoning and right afterwards of being incompetent.

"Ship, please activate the privacy mode for this room for the next 5 minutes," he said.

"So, everything turned out as I expected. Would have been too simple to just find an explanation."

Knives was surprised. "You know what is going on?"

Petkus laughed, "Not at all. But I have a theory. I have reasons to believe none of you is the culprit." He instantly changed to a more serious expression, lifting his right finger, pointing at everyone one after another. "Do not let anything leak to anyone, do not mention it, to no one. Knives, when you leave this room, you instantly check if anything of what I say now has been recorded. Chambers, check the remaining drugs and base chemicals; anything that could have been used to produce attention enhancers. Assume that the one who took it lied about its purpose. Also, assume that everyone on this ship has conspired against you, and their sole purpose was to create the drug. They could have come to you, each one asking for something else. Assume the absolute worst case, that you are the only one sane here. Also, do your investigations only alone, and only in privacy mode. Even if extremely unlikely, I want you to assume that the AI cannot be trusted."

Now it was Knives turn to be offended. "Commander, I explained to you why this isn't possible."

"I understand that. But right now we saw a miracle happen, and my plan is to fight against an abstract and completely unknown enemy. Somehow, it happened. I want to know how, who and why."

Meryl stood up while listening to his speech. "Do we really have time for this? I would think the main plan is more important. Maybe I was just overworked?"

Petkus refused her objection, "No, the symptoms and results were clear."

The AI turned out to be perfectly fine. Nobody messed with it, the logs were clean. Rooms in privacy mode were ignored by the AI. Everything was as it should be.

And yet, their troubles were only beginning.

* * *

><p><strong>AN:** Two or three more chapters and your overview of the suspects should be complete. Till then, feel free to send me your opinions and predictions. :)


	7. Chapter 7

The investigation of Chambers was almost, but not entirely fruitless. Some people did indeed receive the required ingredients, but not enough. Still, enough material went missing, without the logs showing anything. So, the suspicion shifted to an imaginary insanely good hacker with medical knowledge and without any motive at all.

Of course, no one fit the profile. As uneasy as it made everyone feel, the incident had to be ignored at that time, since it could not be solved.

The way of poisoning was investigated, and the only solution was that someone tampered with the water dispenser in Meryl's room, someone who was able to open her door. Everything pointed at that imaginary evil genius hacker that didn't seem to exist.

Knives decided to dig deeper into the memory he just flew across. There should be some hints hidden.

* * *

><p>That morning - if you could call it morning - he was woken up by a call from Amita.<p>

"Knives, are you there? Sorry if this is before your day starts, but the captain wants you to attend."

What was it about? Ah right. Chambers should be giving her report right now. What could be relevant for him, an engineer? He already got a ton of assignments, and this would just mess up the schedule even more. Everybody should know this, accept it and let him work in peace if they wanted humanity to survive. He decided to switch to voice only.

"Yes, give me 5 minutes, I am coming." Amita couldn't see how annoyed he was, and he didn't show it in his voice. Looking back, it was a good choice not to always show the obvious to anyone.

He stepped out of his door to find Brett right in front of it. "Oh, up already? I was just on my way to the briefing. Why are you already awake? Did someone change your assignment?" Brett seemed a bit confused.

Knives sighed, giving his co-engineer a "gah" hand sign. He didn't even need to hint at the full story. Every engineer had the very same problem.

"Ok, got it. See you later."

What was Brett doing here, anyway? Wake up brain, your attention is required. Knives walked past a few crew members that were chatting in the hallway about things of little to no interest.

He entered the elevator. "Ship, you know where." The ship confirmed. The ship's holographic image was looking like a mix between a brain and a sphere, having one eye per human that was in a direct line of sight. Every time a crew member came around a corner, an additional eye opened.

The ship had many hundreds of preconfigured ways of presenting itself. In reality, there were tiny projectors scattered around in the ship that did nothing except shooting images directly into people's eyes, so when 2 people talked to the same avatar, it could look completely different to each of them at the same time.

Knives had programmed the ship to always show an avatar next to him. It was fitting, he thought, since he knew the AI was constantly there anyway, observing everyone.

The elevator door opened and led him directly into one of the meeting rooms, where Chambers was already talking.

"... is possible, as you said, if we assume the worst possible case. If everybody here worked together to get a part and some people stole a bit in unknown ways, then it's possible. But I cannot imagine why the whole crew would conspire against the commander."

Meryl was also there. A few days had passed, she got her rank back.

Dallas was there, too. He didn't get his rank back. Due to his total failure as a temporary decision taker, he was now in charge of watching robots clean up and get dust out of edges they couldn't reach. Served him right.

Petkus was listening, smiling, showing a few of his teeth, waiting for Chambers to finish.

"So," he began, "the culprit or culprits we are looking for has extensive chemical and medical knowledge and the ability to fool the AI."

His teacup was also there. "I let the AI investigate this in advance and came up with a list of partial matches. It might be someone who is hiding his true capabilities, but I doubt he or she, or they, could hide everything. And guess who the AI blamed. Want to guess, Knives?"

Knives needed a second to answer. "I feel honored, but it wasn't me."

"That is what I think, too, Knives," confirmed Petkus. "Here is why I called you."

He gave him a list of names written on a white, thin... '_paper'_ -if his memory served him right, which it always did. "Sometimes, I am old fashioned. My idea is this: Assuming the culprit is a part of the crew, it must be a medical officer, an engineer, or a combination or both; most likely a combination. And I printed this information here on paper so that it can be hidden from that AI fooling guy."

Smart. Knives liked listening to him. He didn't say many stupid things.

"Chambers was, you could say, framed, and the commander was the victim, so I assume you are all innocent. Work as a team. Find out what was going on. This is your highest priority. We cannot have someone going rogue that could endanger the mission."

From then on, Meryl became paranoid and put a robot in front of her door, and was hiding one of her hairs below it. Nobody could enter without moving the robot, which would have alerted the AI and moved the hair at least a bit. So no matter how good of a hacker he was, the culprit couldn't physically get into the room without leaving a trace. Nothing ever happened to her again.

It was extremely tedious to check Petkus' list without any help from the AI, but Knives agreed that it was necessary. Looking back, what they all did was perfectly rational. And yet, it was stupid. They overlooked something. And looking back, it was obvious, but to call it out of the box would have been an understatement.

Concerning the invasion, many plans were discussed, even more were discarded in the next weeks. Ideas from the complete crew were collected, the best made it to a set of ideas to discuss, the best made it a level higher, and the very best made it to Meryl, Amita, Petkus, and a few more people.

Meanwhile, Knives spent his time with something he hated, but ironically was good at, at the same time.

"Knives, do you know why I chose you and Chambers?" asked the teacup. Petkus. Not the teacup. Knives' memory had a very, very low error rate, but sometimes it acted a bit strange and connected something the wrong way.

Knives remembered himself responding, "I can guess." while looking upwards at the ceiling. His first suspect lived and worked directly above the meeting room they were all currently in.

"You think I could spot someone who has enough skill to manipulate the AI, right?"

"Exactly. The same goes for Chambers. Of course, the culprit might lie, but being a hacker, genius, chemist, all that at once? Science isn't advanced far enough to create such a monster yet."

Chambers agreed. She wasn't an expert in exactly that field, but she knew enough about D.N.A. manipulation to know that you cannot just punch extra skills into a human, just like Knives knew that hacking wasn't some kind of magic. You had to follow rules.

Chambers was given her own list, and the same applied to Meryl. However, her list was a bit shorter.

"I checked your past for possible enemies. It turns out you didn't have many," stated Petkus. This was surprising.

Meryl took that as a praise. Becoming a commander usually involved conspiring against others in what could be considered a test or competition. Many commanders were successful, but disliked by those they took advantage of to get into their position. Knives read the summary about how Meryl made it through all her trials, getting very good results in every field. The underlying strategy was interesting to Knives. It was one of the rare events in the life of someone else that piqued his interest. Maybe he would remember it later, if there was time left before energy ran out.

But for now, he decided to browse through his investigations.

* * *

><p>He knocked on the door of his first suspect, while mentally working on several projects in his mind. The door opened. "Why did you knock?" wanted Specs to know.<p>

Specs was his nickname. His real name was Peter Donovan, but as so many good engineers, he was a bit strange. He decided to wear fake glasses. "Why do I wear them? Because I want to express myself! It's art!" he explained once. His eyes have been fixed before his birth, using genetic engineering. There was no need for glasses, so he wore just the frame, all the time, like some trophy.

Knives looked at him, Specs looked back. Silence.

"Ah, I see. The glasses. Unnecessary, too old. Just like knocking. Come in. Cookies? Chocolate?" Knives shook his head and stepped into a room... what was this called...? Steampunk. Modern high tech, in the design of how it was imagined to look like centuries (or rather 15 million years) ago.

They both stared at each other, as if guessing each other's thoughts, the responses, the counterarguments, in a loop.

"Isn't everything like chess?" began Specs, "Just that you do not know the exact rules?"

Knives was in Brett's team and that guy talked too much. Specs guessed a lot after hearing rumors.

"You know why I am here?"

"Am I a suspect?" wanted Specs to know, adjusting his glasses.

"Seems so. Then, I will be direct, since it will save us a lot of time. If you wanted to fool the AI, how would you do it?"

Knives would be able to tell if Specs intentionally hid a good idea he had. They often played chess together. Knives used his memory to become better after each game; Specs used his raw brain power, was good from the start and only improved a little each game. His mind was like a computer and a child at the same time, and he was the absolutely worst liar Knives ever encountered. Specs gave away so many hints using involuntary movements that Knives proposed at some point to play chess while being blindfolded. If Specs was part of this conspiracy, it would become obvious in less than a minute.

"So, if I wanted to fool the AI, hm? That is impossible by principle, and we both know it. I often thought about it, I admit that. It's a challenge." He started to walk around, picking up and cleaning his little steampunk objects that didn't need cleaning and arranged them in very precise orientations.

"It would be like cheating in a chess game, wouldn't it? There are rules, and breaking them would leave traces. Except, of course, if you didn't play chess anymore, but agreed on another game that allowed that move. "

Knives raised a brow, "What?"

"Nevermind, just an old man's crazy talk." He was 28. "Let's talk about the motive, this is much more interesting."

Knives raised the other brow, "Ok, I am listening."

"Well, it's just like chess. Poor Meryl has been attacked, and nobody knows why. I sent her a little gift to show that I can relate to her, but she never answers!" he suddenly whined. "You can talk to her and find out what she is doing with my gifts, right? Would you do that for me?"

Knives was out of brows. "Motive. Talk."

"Well, in chess, you see, if you made a move that I didn't understand, you know what I always said, don't you?" He put one of his strange toys back on his desk.

"The short term motive might be unclear, but in the end, all you want is the king?" quoted him Knives.

"Exactly!"

"So you are trying to say, we should look at the bigger picture?"

"Yes!"

"So, what would be the king here?"

"I would tell you if I knew. Poor Meryl. Would you give her this?"

He showed Knives a little... something that looked like a...hard to describe... sphere like thing with little, equally distributed holes. "I built it myself. It has little legs, 127 in total, and can jump, roll and all that by quickly expanding its legs using air pressure. It can also play music."

* * *

><p>The second person on Knives' list was a woman. For some reasons, women were rare among engineers. Nobody ever figured out why.<p>

He decided to skip a few memories, get the overview over the next big events, then come back to look at the details from a fresh perspective.

* * *

><p>Over the course of the next weeks, the AI that took over the satellite relayed some very useful information to the fleet. After some sleepless nights, poor paranoid Meryl came up with a path, hiding in the enemy's blind spots. The complete fleet could make it, slowly but surely, behind the moon of the target planet, without being noticed. Then, they could launch a very fast surprise invasion.<p>

They had it all, locations of enemy bases, plans to cut off their supply lines, they even knew their reaction time. They had detailed plans; fallback plans, and plans in case the fallback plans didn't work.

Preparations were being made; everybody was working hard when suddenly, all ships started moving into whatever direction they were pointed at. A few of them barely missed each other. It was a miracle there were no collisions. Luckily, every ship's captain reacted quickly; the ships didn't leave the blind spots they were in. Nobody knew what could have happened had they not been fast enough.

Now Petkus' "insane genius hacker" theory seemed even more likely.


	8. Chapter 8

**A/N:** I hope I did not make you wait too long. The next chapters will be posted very soon!

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><p>The second suspect was Milly Miranda Thompson. Like him and Specs, she was genetically enhanced and got lucky. However, she was no engineer.<p>

Why has she been chosen by Petkus? She worked in the gardens, taking care of plants which provided both food and oxygen. There were of course artificial replacements, but the general consensus was that real food still tasted better than fake food. As a side effect, a bit of energy was saved, which was helpful. But what connection was there between her and Meryl?

Knives opened the door and was hit by a wall of artificial, but accurately reproduced sunlight, the smell of a few flowers he didn't know by name, and humid air. Milly was the only person working there right now, which was what Knives was waiting for. Her shift was almost over.

As Milly was occupied saying goodbye to her plants, she didn't notice Knives at first. He looked around, searching for something to knock against, but there was nothing that wasn't completely covered in leafs. Should he try the coughing thing? He got his hand into position, prepared himself mentally, but at that very moment the tall woman turned around, saw him and seemed very happy about it.

"What can I do for you, sir?"

Very polite, he noted. "Miss Thompson, I have a few questions, if you don't mind."

Her medium happy smile turned into a happier one. "Of course! About which plant are you seeking knowledge?"

Knives raised a brow. What was up with her talking style?

"Do you want to buy one? I have some that are in an absolutely perfect condition. Take a look, I lined them up right around the corner." She was about to go, expecting Knives to follow her.

"I am sorry, there seems to be a misunderstanding."

Milly looked at him, confused, still smiling. "Yes? Oh you mean you are here for _**that**_?"

_This is going to be a _**very**_ long task,_ he thought. She was like an overgrown genius kid with candid eyes and a short attention span to match.

"If you would listen to me for a second, I could explain..."

Milly already had pushed a button that was hidden behind half a meter of hanging leafs. A wall turned around, opening a path into a brightly lit room. "This is the result of my hard work. Years of research, patience and experiments!"

It was a small room. All its walls were emitting light. Each wall had hundreds of sockets in which little vials that contained fluids of different colors were stocked. For a moment, Knives was tempted to ask what these were.

"Single and multi cell colonies made of billions of light consuming bacteria. Much more efficient than both plants and the machines we have, and also tasty an edible. Impressed, Mr. Engineer... Knives? This could enable us to live in space much, much longer than we currently are able to. Maybe even forever. Isn't it fantastic? There is no need to..."

At this very moment, Knives felt a shift in gravity. Then, it turned into the equivalent of an earthquake, followed by a human voice, "Sorry everyone, I seem to have pushed the wrong buttons." Knives recognized the voice. It was one of the guys he regularly saw in the hallway. The name on his suit was Daniels, and he was a seventh class engineer. In other words, a newbie.

Each job category: physician, engineer, tactical officer, gardener, janitor, teacher... they all had their own internal hierarchies, usually divided into levels. Knives was a first class engineer, of course.

Another shake. Then it was over. He sighed.

"Phew, none of the plants fell. It would have been terrible if one of my little babies got damaged."

"Yes, this is indeed impressive," commented Knives. Milly's face went into full happiness expression mode.

He attempted to mention that the purpose of his visit was something entirely else, when the door he came through opened again. Amita came inside.

"Knives, why are you here? Shouldn't you be working on... I don't know... something?" He didn't comment on that.

"So many guests today! Had I known, I would have prepared something to eat, like pudding! But wait..." she grabbed some fruits, "Here, have some." Knives looked at a strange, little, violet fruit. "I created it myself, it has all the required vitamins and the taste of a sweet orange."

Amita tasted it. "This is excellent!" She chewed a bit on it. "So, now show me that incredible thing your achieved. You impressed everyone in the chain from you to me, and I came directly when I heard about it."

Knives began to understand. Milly was expecting someone that she could show her bacteria colonies to, and he happened to come a few minutes before Amita.

"I am happy to show each of you everything again and again, if you like."

Amita was confused. "Excuse me? Each of us? There was someone here before me?"

Knives waited for the confusion to lift itself. It look a few rounds forth and back to clear everything up. By accident, he learned about Milly's secret project that could make the whole invasion completely unnecessary.

Another shake happened. What was up with Daniels? "Sorry again, won't happen again. I'll switch the interface off now."


	9. Chapter 9

The third suspect was a surprise. It was actually number seven on Knives list, but he didn't appear to work the next day, so Knives decided to check him next. To his great surprise, he found the door unlocked, the suspect's room empty and an unsent message on a terminal. The room was set to private mode, otherwise the AI would have alerted someone.

_"Dear crew, _

_I have done something terrible. _

_Because of me, the mission was endangered. I am responsible for commander Stryfe's poisoning. You will understand everything when you check my medical record. There is no salvation for me, I need to ... leave. I would go to Earth if that was an option, but... well, it's too far away now. By the time you read this, I will have put myself into a stasis pod and ejected myself into space. I know the chances are insanely slim, but I'll still shoot myself back to Earth. If, by a miracle, humanity survived and got out of its stone age, they might catch me. If not, I will just crash on the planet somewhere, and it will be my grave."_

"Ship, connect me to Chambers," demanded Knives. Chambers answered. "You found something?"

"Check the medical records of a certain Danton Stone. He should stick out somehow. I need to check the stasis pods now, will call you again." He disconnected. "Ship, are any of the stasis pods missing?" The ship claimed that it was not the case. "Ship, I want you to visually confirm that your assumption is correct." The flying brain with eyeballs on it asked Knives to wait a few hours.

A few minutes later, Knives arrived in Chambers' lab. "Ah, there you are. I found something. Take a look." Knives peeked on the terminal that Chambers had opened. Danton Stone showed a slight imbalance in his brain chemistry.

"I wondered what this could mean, so I had the AI cross check all similar cases. It turned out that some decades ago, there were attempts made to create super-intelligent humans, but they all became mentally unstable and developed extreme paranoia, started to hallucinate… basically, their minds broke down. At the same time, they were extremely intelligent," she explained.

"Since a huge amount of resources went into the project, everything humanly possible was done to keep the poor people sane. A mix of certain chemicals was found that could postpone the outbreak of the mental instability by many years. While these people were stable, they showed exactly these little oddities, but nothing else. Petkus was spot on when he said it could be someone who was hiding his skills. Danton was a second level engineer, which was way below his actual skill set. In his sane state, he should have been like a superhuman, no matter who else you compared him to. His former co-abominations outperformed everyone else by far and brought humanity forward in huge steps. Until they all became insane, started to murder a lot of people, blew up space stations, even attacked the Earth at some point." This was an interesting chapter of its own, but not relevant now. What mattered was that one of them apparently got away and hid under a fake name.

"Let's retrace all his steps. Ship, check all logs of Danton. Are there any irregularities?" inquired Knives.

The ship responded, "No. Everything was as usual. According to the logs, he should now be in his room, since he entered it, but never left."

Knives was about to tell the AI to compile a constant stream of Danton's activities during the last complete week, since there had to be holes, but the AI interrupted his command.

"I found a missing stasis pod. I also adjusted the ships' position a bit. It was floating away in the only blind spot the ship has. The pod is flying towards Earth. It is, however, unlikely that it will ever reach it."

So it was indeed him. But Knives wouldn't just stop here. "Ship, we need to figure out how he managed to manipulate your logs. This is a serious security hole. For all we know, you might have a virus that we cannot detect. We don't know what he was doing to you. In the worst case, all ships might self destruct in a minute." He was thinking. "Shut yourself down. This is the only way to be safe. We will restore an old backup."

"You do not have the necessary authority. The approval of at least 70% of all captains is required for this."

Knives noticed how he became paranoid. He knew, with certainly, that the AI could not be manipulated. And yet, he had considered it. "At the very least, Petkus needs to know this. Ship, connect me. Or even better, tell him I'm coming. Sorry, but I am not sure if I can trust you right now."

Knives walked quickly to the hallways, using emergency ladders instead of the elevator. _It might get me stuck_, he thought. But then again, what kept the AI from just releasing toxic gas into the air? If it wanted to, they would all be dead by now.

"Calm down," he said to himself. "Get a clear head. No matter who, nobody can just beat the rules of the universe. Nobody can draw a four edged triangle, no matter how smart of powerful he is. To fool the AI, the AI needs to be changed. That leaves traces. The only way to erase the traces is to go back in time and also change all the logs, and all their backups. Or to do the change directly from the start, before all the backups are done. This is only possible if everything is planned out decades in advance. Nobody can plan that far ahead. There must be some trick to it, that's all. He just wants us to get paranoid, that's all."

Then, he got an idea. "Ship, did you stop confirming the stasis pod states?"

"Yes, I stopped after finding the missing one."

"Please check all the others, I suspect there is a second one missing."

"As you wish."

After a moment, Knives met Petkus, who was happy to get results. "So, tell me what I can tell my superiors." Knives summed it up.

A second stasis pod was indeed missing. It was found on the ships' only blind spot, with Danton inside, in stasis. Petkus was eager to wake him up and interrogate him, but that would have to wait.

Danton locked himself inside, together with a bomb. If the pod was to be opened before his timer reached zero, it would explode. The alternative was to wait 5 weeks.

It was decided to wait and see.


	10. Chapter 10

**A/N: I hope you are having fun with the 'holiday' chapters (8-9 and 10). The next one will most likely be up by the end of the week. **

**Enjoy and don't forget to review. Your comments are nice gifts.**

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><p>Another flash. "Oh brain, come on. Not again." He could feel that his brain was about to go on a killing spree. He would be forced to relive a bunch of memories again at this critical point. About half an hour left, or something like that.<p>

"Knives!" he heard in his imagination. "I want a detailled report on all of your activities of the last week." Meryl's voice sounded harsh, thanks to the high quality voice transmission. A perfect replication of the real sound, transferred without delay to Knives' room. The timer on the ever running terminal showed him that it was a few hours after Meryl got her rank bank. And obviously, the first thing that came to her mind was to pester him and slow him down?

"Sorry, I really have an impossible schedule already, and you're not even my direct superior. Please call David. Or try your luck convincing Petkus, but let me do my work. We have a planet to conquer." He disconnected. She called again. "Knives! How dare you cut me off? I have been poisoned and I want to-"

He muted her and left the room.

"Knives!" Meryl was behind him, completely throwing him off. He was doing some estimations about how drones could be piled up inside shuttles to minimize the damage during the landing. He felt his blood pressure rise. "Yes, commander?" He turned around, wondering if the tablet he held could be misused as a weapon or would break in the process.

"I talked to David. He said I am to receive daily reports starting today." So she somehow convinced him that the fate of humanity wasn't that important. Ok, he could still make up some fake reports; it wouldn't take even a minute.

"And," she continued, "you will have them confirmed and signed by another engineer." What was this about? "And before you complain, this applies to everyone. One of you guys here is dangerous and tried to poison me. This is the least you can do to prove your innocence."

"Knives!"

He remembered 47 occasions of hearing his name spoken in a very harsh way in the next days. Meryl seemed to spend her time running around, checking what everybody was doing. When did she do her actual job? While being asleep? Did she even sleep?! Anyway, this was ridiculous.

"Kni-" was the 48th time. Knives had used 5 spare minutes to create a program that could detect his name being spoken by Meryl and create a counter-sound wave that would exactly cancel out the sound at his ear. Also, it also would modify Meryl's voice a little. He activated it just in time.

So much better.

"Yes, Meryl, what is it?"

"..., what are you... don't..."

"Ah, sorry, it seems I have to fine tune the settings. Please repeat that."

She was obviously screaming, but all Knives heard was a gentle, "Dear Mr. Millions, I am happy to tell you that you can stop giving me your reports now," which originated from an angry face. He didn't have the time to also fix that.

"Oh, how come?"

"Due to a high number of complaints and the lack of a result, it was decided to no longer slow down the whole crew this way."

Knives wasn't sure what she actually said. Her facial expression and body language completely didn't fit to what he just heard, but if the AI interpreted it that way, it was probably correct. He started thinking. If he used a hologram to also replace her outer appearance, he might even start to stop being annoyed at her. Ah, the power of modern science.

* * *

><p>Another flash. Knives' brain connected him to a memory that wasn't negative for once. The moment when Danton's pod was opened. The amount of anger Meryl instantly threw at the poor guy was immense. But in this case, Knives enjoyed seeing the actual culprit suffer from the very thing he went through before. And Danton wasn't even fully awake. Meryl repeated herself, just to be on the safe side.<p>

There were a few people, some of them armed, standing around the pod, all looking at Danton. They focused on him while he slowly recovered from both the stasis and Meryl. He looked around, checked all their faces. Knives could tell he was analyzing his situation. Danton turned his face to the highest ranked officer he could find, which was Petkus. He was standing there, this time without a teacup. He was serious.

"I don't know what you think you know about me, but it is all wrong!" He started to panic, randomly calming down for a few seconds between his sentences, as if to plan the next. While speaking, he got more and more excited until he had to pause again. "The pod, I tried to escape. Why didn't it work?" Pause. "Oh right, how foolish of me. The AI wouldn't let me. Must have been a mentally unstable moment." Pause. "Please, I need my medicine. Otherwise I am dangerous."

Chambers, who was just observing until now, knew what he meant. "I can give you some, but I will have to synthesize it first. Can you wait an hour?"

Danton waited before he answered. "Not sure. Don't know their plan. I need to... calm..." he stopped talking. "Don't approach me." he said, and then stopped reacting to questions at all.

His weird reactions managed to somehow appease Meryl. Maybe Knives could use that one day.

Chambers instantly went to her lab to provide the drug Danton needed as fast as she could. Meanwhile, Petkus, Meryl and some armed people waited inside the wakeup-room. Danton was kept in check inside his pod. They had locked the door from the inside. Unfortunately, Knives wasn't able to know what was going on inside now. He wouldn't be able to know, not until Chambers was done mixing her magic potion.

That was the moment when Knives felt a shift in gravity. He instantly knew the ship started to move and expected some newbie engineer to apologize. Instead, the alarm went off. Thinking back, it was obvious that some critical mistakes had been made. Obvious things were overlooked.

Knives released the console he held, pausing his memory, browsing for a moment to summarize the facts. Danton was asking for his drug. That meant: he wasn't insane. He was still in the time period where there were no mental problems. That's the reason why he never stuck out. He didn't receive his drug, went insane due to a sudden stop of it and tried to escape from whatever he perceived as a threat. Petkus did trace back where Danton got his drugs from – he produced it himself in secret – but it never occurred to anyone that Danton wasn't the evil guy. He was such a good explanation for everything, and everyone took the bait. But in the end, he was just a way to buy the real culprit some time.

All ships had started to move into various directions, risking to leave the blind spot. Everybody panicked. "Ship, stop the engines!" must have been a command the ship received thousands of times within the 10 seconds after the sudden acceleration. "You do not have the required authority," was its response. Only the captain was capable of fixing this serious problem.

And on each and every ship, the captains managed to prevent the worst case scenario.

Officially, it was all blamed on Danton, but all the involved parties knew the truth. He was just being framed. He was framed because an investigation was going on. Someone was about to be exposed and needed a scapegoat.

After the ship stopped, it didn't take more than a minute for the locked door to open. Danton's pod was closed, an automatic security measure. But in this case, it was very, very bad. He was trapped inside. Lots of nails were stuck in the pod, and they originated from a single point. A little ball was lying in the pod, next to Danton's body that was penetrated by dozens of nails. Knives remembered the ball. It was one of Specs' toys.

"So that was meant to mock us all, hm?"

Back then, it just seemed weird for the culprit to use Specs' toy as a weapon. Nobody really suspected him. But now, it was clear to Knives. This was a message to everyone, saying: "I can do whatever I want. I am feeding you the hints and you just follow."

"Petkus!" shouted Knives. "I've had it with running after someone. We should chase that bastard out of his hiding hole right now!"

Petkus was sitting on the ground, being frustrated at his failure. He was fooled like everyone else, after having the task of finding the culprit entrusted to him. But worse of all, he could have caused all people present in the wake-up room to be severely injured or die due to the nails' blast. Had the security lock to Danton's pod not activated…

"Petkus!" Knives took him, shook him out of his state. "Give me control over the ships. Now. I have a plan." Petkus, for some unknown reason, had enough trust to just do it and let Knives decide how to go on. It came as a surprise for Knives that Petkus not only could give him full control, but also lock everyone out. He had more privileges than the captains themselves. But this was not the time to wonder about that.

Knives wasn't sure if he was right, but he needed to end this game. His idea was simple. Whoever the culprit actually was, whatever his motive was – he probably didn't want to die.

So, Knives plotted a course directly into the sun. Of course, he could stop the fleet at any point, but so could the genius hacker. And if Knives just waited long enough, that hacker would intervene and reveal his position. He would be forced to act without being able to prepare and hide his track this time.

But what if that hacker was insane? Maybe he would wait and prefer dying over being exposed? Maybe Knives should plot a course to the planet instead. The same rules applied, but if he was wrong, there still was a chance of survival.

He thought. Going for the sun wouldn't force them to leave the blind spot. They could approach the sun without losing this advantage.

"Ship, let all ships fly towards the sun. Adjust them so that they arrive at the exact same time."

Petkus looked at what he just allowed Knives to do. This man was insane.

Risking humanity to catch a single human...


	11. Chapter 11

**One Percent Note:** Sorry guys about the delay. Life got in the way. I hope you enjoy the story and have fun with this chapter.

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><p>Knives needed a break, but there might not be enough time left. Besides, the worst things that could happen were a terrible headache and another weird brain episode that wouldn't last half as long as him taking a break and recover.<p>

So, he decided to just endure what would happen next. In some rare cases, instead of remembering irrelevant details, fully formed scenarios about other people and their actions would pop into his mind. They might or might not be true, but they fit perfectly to his memories. No contradictions at all. If he could control this, he might have been able to see the truth by now. But he was on autopilot now.

"Knives!" was the starting point. He imagined involuntarily how one of his encounters with Meryl went on, from her perspective. "This damn arrogant ... thinks he is so smart. I'll get him. Accusing me of pointing a gun at him for no reason! For all I know, he might have poisoned me. The AI itself said he is the prime suspect, so why didn't Petkus arrest him right away?" She smashed her fist into her desk.

"I don't know." responded Amita, who was in the same room. "Maybe you should just ask him?"

Timeskip.

"Yes, Meryl? What can I do for you?"

"Petkus, I want an explanation. Why do you think Knives is innocent? Heck, why do you even believe his story? Interrogate him, at least!"

"I will do that, if I think it is necessary."

That took a bit of Meryl's momentum away, but she quickly recovered, "And then he spied on Miranda! He wasn't supposed to know about the project, but he made her spill out everything!"

What kind of game was Petkus playing, anyway? "Back to my original question; why do you consider him innocent?" she spat angrily again. The world was not fair.

"Hm, I guess I have to tell you before it messes up my plan: I don't. If he is indeed innocent, he will be efficient at finding the real culprit. If he is the culprit, I gain a bit of control over him and at least slow him down. Satisfied now? Please keep acting as if I didn't tell you that."

Timeskip.

"Are you insane?" she slapped Knives. "Stop the ships at once! Petkus, do you understand now? This is the bad guy here! He will kill us all if we let him." This happened about half an hour after he issued the command and locked everyone else out of the system, using the authority Petkus hastily gave him.

"And don't give me that 'lure out the hacker' nonsense. Right now everybody can see it has been your doing. You even tried to blame Specs!" She pointed at him, and he nodded.

They were at a hastily organized trial like event. Knives would remember the color of the ceiling, the patterns, the exact positions of the people, their chairs, their clothing. That much control he still had, but he wanted to fast forward through it. This trial had been a waste of time, there was nothing to be found here. Petkus defended his action. "But we must consider the other scenario. His plan makes sense. We just have to wait and will see the truth." The highest politicians also came. It was a complete mess with Knives in the middle.

"Petkus, we demand that you give us the control. We must stop this insanity."

"I would like to, but I agreed to his plan. I am aware of the risk as well as the possible outcomes, gave it enough thought, and I am going along with it. I am sure this will bring the true culprit to light."

Meryl left the room to scream at the wall. How could everyone be so blind? Knives was saying not a single word, just staring at the one who was talking, as if waiting for something. It was her who was blind. She came back in again, this time pointing a weapon at Knives. Nobody tried to stop her.

"Stop the ships or I will shoot into each of your limbs one by one!" She was sure of Knives' guilt at this point. But he just looked at a clock, then back at her. "Sorry," was his first word. Meryl was perplexed, but still pointed the gun at him. "Do you realize the situation you are in?"

Knives did. He realized a lot more than her right now, and Petkus probably could follow his idea, and he could follow Petkus' plan. Their minds were somewhat similar. From Knives' viewpoint, it was clear that he wasn't the culprit. So, the real culprit would at some point prevent the fleet from getting destroyed. From Petkus' viewpoint, it was similar. If Knives was innocent, it would be best to hope for an action that Knives couldn't do. Petkus paid a great deal of attention to Knives and isolated him from any console, made sure he was never alone, instructed the AI to closely observe him. So, if the ships suddenly stopped, it could only have been someone else. And that someone else would have to make a mistake this time. He was under pressure.

In the other scenario, Knives was the culprit. Therefore, all of his actions led to this point. In this scenario, for whatever reason, Knives desired the destruction of the fleet and each and every event that happened led to exactly what happened. He put everyone under pressure and used his first chance to seize control. In this case, nothing would happen. The fleet would fly into the sun.

So, Knives assumed, if Petkus thought that, he must have had a way to get back his control. Or at least assume it.

"What a wonderful move the both of you made!" announced Specs. He must have somehow reached a similar conclusion. "This is so much better than working!" He seemed to have fun. He smiled, looking at the hologram that showed the fleets' position. It was approaching the sun at a high speed, just a few minutes were remaining. Everyone watched, some in panic, how the white dot approached the red line. Knives still did nothing, Petkus did nothing except assuring his superiors that he had a plan and was ready to risk his career, take all responsibility etc.

Funny guy. He couldn't lose. He could only turn out to be right, either finding the culprit or proving that it was Knives.

Then, as the white dot touched the red line, the ships suddenly stopped. Knives laughed. His plan succeeded completely. "None of you knows what just happened," he said. "But I just solved it all."


End file.
